Stay on target

Back in the days of geek prehistory, a T-shirt was a signal to the world around you that you cared about your nerdy pursuits enough to fly them like a flag. Companies like Graphitti Designs contracted with movie studios and comics publishers to create shirts with our favorite characters and sold them up on the walls of comic book stores and through mail-order.

The computer revolution has enabled the T-shirt world to become something totally new – affordable production and distribution means that shirts can be printed in small quantities and sold anywhere in the world. Starting with Threadless, dozens of companies popped up letting artists and designers show their stuff. It’s a better time than ever to be a geek fashionista, and if you’re looking to expand your wardrobe we’re going to help you out every week… on T-Shirt Tuesday.

This week: Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise is all about gearing up to fight massive beasts. Start with a shirt.

Hunting Club: Bazelgeuse

Artist AdamWorks has a whole series of “Hunting Club” shirts with portraits of Monster Hunter‘s most menacing creatures, and I strongly encourage you to check them out. It was sheer torture picking just one to feature here, but the raging visage of Bazelgeuse, the flying wyvern with explosive scales that bombards the unwary from above, got the nod. This is just a seriously epic drawing with tons of detail and a bold, aggressive color scheme.

Super Hunting Bros

It’s funny that the notoriously hardcore Monster Hunter series found a home on Nintendo’s casual-centric consoles, but we’re not complaining. For a while there, it looked like we’d miss the chance to see a new MonHun game here after the fourth installment on the 3DS. Of course, we all know that Monster Hunter World is back on the big boy consoles, but the franchise’s flirtation with Nintendo is commemorated in this shirt by Ashmish that mixes it up with the classic Super Mario 3 cover design.

Hunters & Monsters

We love the super slick illustration style by CoinboxTees on this shirt, which takes the classic trade dress of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventures and transplants Monster Hunter characters and beasts into it. It’s executed with inimitable style and works for fans of either franchise – or both, which you really should be.

Eat, Sleep, Wiggle, Repeat

One of the many things that makes Monster Hunter so appealing is the vibrant living ecosystem the games are set in. Big critters eat small ones, and there’s a whole food chain out there for you to insert yourselves into. One of the goofiest and most iconic prey animals are the Wigglers, unusual long-necked reptiles that are anchored to the ground and sway in the breeze. Artist allenwolf404 obviously likes these guys as much as we do, because he gave them their own shirt.

Meowscular Chef

If you’re looking for gains to get the strength to slap the biggest monsters around, you need to eat right. That’s where the Meowscular Chef comes in. This Felyne canteen owner is one of Monster Hunter World‘s most iconic NPCs, a buff anthropomorphic cat who serves the hungry in Astera. Artist DigitalCleo perfectly captures this badass cat’s attitude even as his less serious kitchen helpers cavort behind him.

It Ain’t Easy Being Kheze

The real challenge with buying a geeky T-shirt is walking the line between obscurity and weirdness. But, you know, Monster Hunter is such a deep niche franchise that anybody who gets it really gets it. That’s the best justification we can come up with for buying this gloriously silly shirt from Ashmish that portrays the leech-mouthed snow wyvern Khezu in a way that we’ve never seen in the games. Okay, I doubt these nocturnal electrical cave dwellers have ever dropped a dope rhyme, but I’m ready to be proven wrong.

Rathalos

In the original Monster Hunter, Rathalos was the top of the mountain, the apex predator of the Ancient Forest that hovered out of reach to ruin a hunter’s day. His iconic design has become a hallmark of the series, as fighting him separated the pros from the schmoes. We really dig this design by Blaclyc that interprets the beast in the style of a Mayan stone carving, like an archaeological relic of a formidable beast that stalked our primitive ancestors.

Monster Hunter Crest

The visual style of Monster Hunter is so incredibly well-developed at this point in the series, and aficionados can recognize its iconic logos and crests on sight. Send a signal to other players that you’re ready to team up and hit the wilderness to go hunting with this simple and elegant shirt designed by Pyropete.

Nargacuga

Another fan favorite beast from the series, the Nargacuga was introduced in Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. Half black panther, half flying dragon, these critters are a pain in the butt to contend with, capable of decimating your health with a few swipes of its prehensile tail. Artist Supairo gives us a stylish and minimalistic take on the wyvern’s design as it perches in the foliage getting ready to pounce on some unsuspecting prey.

Hunting Land

One of the essential things that Monster Hunter does so well is establish a sense of scale. The player is absolutely not the biggest thing out there, and figuring out ways to content with beasts many times your size is key to mastery. Artist Ashmish totally nails that feeling with this shirt depicting a quartet of hunters facing off with a fearsome Rajang. As the monster rises from the mists, the combatants below stand ready for anything. Pretty cool stuff.

Monster Hunter Logo

Not every T-shirt has to be fancy – sometimes a single color and a striking silhouette can deliver the goods just as well. Case in point, the last design on our list by ballhard. All they need is a logotype and the head of a fearsome beast looming up in front of the moon to perfectly encapsulate everything we love about Monster Hunter.